


==> Fix Him

by 3PM



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Depression, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Will add more as needed - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 19:59:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2081205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3PM/pseuds/3PM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the traumatic events of SBURB, one father is left picking up the pieces.</p>
<p>(This is a reader contributing story! Suggests prompts in the comments and it may be featured in the chapters to come.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ==> Be the loving father.

**Author's Note:**

> This is about two years old, but I'm still a little proud of it and I'd like to get back into writing, so I thought actually posting something and getting some feedback from the fandom might help improve my game a little. Constructive criticism is always appreciated, but keep in mind that I'm going in without a beta-reader, so don't bother pointing out little spelling mistakes.
> 
> And like the summary says, this is reader contributing! It won't progress if people don't give me prompts.

==> Be the loving father.

You are! At least, you try to be.

Every morning you wake up before you alarm clock. You lay in your bed and stare at the ceiling; the off white you keep telling yourself you're going to paint over, the slowly rotating fan that keeps the air circulating, that piece of play-dough that looks a bit like a dinosaur that you remember John throwing up there when he was five. You still don't have the heart to take it down. The alarm goes off and you get up. You slide your legs out of bed, listen to every creak and crack your old bed makes and the ones your body replies with. You shower, shave, change into something more presentable and make your way downstairs.

You've memorized each stair, know how to avoid the ones that squeak even though you know that it stopped waking John seven years ago. You say a silent "Good morning" to your mother, you always do, and then breakfast starts. You always try to change it up, try to incorporate cute things like pancakes shaped like bears and bacon and egg smiles even though you're sure John stopped caring about those things four years ago. You still do it though, no matter what.

Today you decide on waffles. You mix the batter from scratch, you always do, because John can tell the difference between homemade and boxed even though he stopped pointing it out two years ago. You top the waffles with sliced strawberries and set them on the table with the bottle of maple syrup and a glass of orange juice.

As soon as you sit down to eat - though you never actually do until John joins you - you hear slow feet come padding down the stairs. You wait, you hold your breath, and you exhale with a renewed smile when your son sits himself on the opposite side of the table.

You notice he looks tired.

You notice his eyes are red, puffy, and he's definitely been crying.

You ask him how he slept, and he says, "Good!"

You know he's lying.

But you don't say a word.

You smile, you nod, and you both eat your breakfast in silence.

It takes everything you have to hold yourself together until he gets up and puts his dishes in the sink. He doesn't hug you around the knees, around the thighs, or around the waist because he's too tall for that now. He doesn't hug you at all. You sit in silence and don't say a word as your son goes back upstairs and hides in his room. You don't say anything because you don't know what to say to make things better.

You don't try to help him because he won't speak to you.

You try to understand but he won't tell you what's wrong.

You want to hold him but he pushes you away like your skin burns him.

Your name is James Egbert, and for the first time in your life you feel like a terrible human being.

Your name is James Egbert, and you feel like the worst father alive.


	2. ==> Go to sleep.

==> Go to sleep.

Your name is John Egbert, and you don't want to!

This isn't some adolescent stand against bedtimes and how you're starting to be a little too old for that kind of thing Dad, really! This is about the fact that it's nine in the morning and you would really rather do something else. Except not, because that's a bit of a lie. You haven't slept soundly for a little over a month now and you've breezed past feeling tired and face-planted into unexplained territory marked Physical and Mental Exhaustion. You wish this was just a bout of teenage angst or maybe even insomnia because you Dad would have surely taken you to the doctor and let him give you a prescription for sleeping pills. You just want this to all be over but it isn't, and you're scared that it never will be.

When you get upstairs you go straight for your room, you always do. Your greeted by a familiar space and a not so familiar mess. Clothes, clean and dirty, litter the floor, books and CD cases and comics strewn about even though there's a perfectly good shelf over there in the corner, and all kinds of papers and pencil crayons. You remember Rose telling you that drawing what was on your mind was supposed to be therapeutic. You look at the doodles of planets that don't exist and people who you won't ever see again and decide that it isn't very therapeutic at all.

Your bed is empty, warm and inviting, but you settle on the floor instead. As nice as the bed seems, it's a malevolent beast that feeds on your sleep and provides you with terrible things you would rather not think about. Ever.

You spend more time sitting in silence now than you ever did.

You spend more time alone with your thoughts than with your friends.

With your family.

Your room has become you life.

As your eyes scan the room, looking everything over, you can't help but feel like this isn't your room anymore. Not the one you remember anyway. This one has half full cups of juice and water, even one with milk that you've been avoiding touching because it's starting to smell. Some of your posters flop forward where the tape had given out, your computer screen is riddled with smeary fingerprints, and there's crumbs of food coating everything.

There's so much mess and you find it disgusting.

But you don't do anything about it because it fits. You're a mess, so everything else should be to.


	3. ==> John, clean up your room!

==> John, clean up your room!

Somehow that seems like the most obvious first step to take. When you think about it, cleaning up your room could be some sort of metaphor for cleaning up your life and starting off fresh. Slap on a coat of paint, get some new curtains, and when you make everything sparkle then you'll have created something you can be proud of. You think about doing this, but you don't. Instead you decide to do something close to that.

A shower is in order, you decide, because that old milk on your desk isn't the only stinky thing around here. Pee-ew!


	4. ==> James, clean up YOUR room?

==> James, clean up YOUR room?

Now that just seems like a waste of time.

Not only is your room always kept entirely spotless, everything in it's place, you've got much more important things to busy yourself with.

Just as the sink drains and you finish drying the breakfast dishes, you hear the upstairs shower start up and smile to yourself. It's a small victory, a very, very small victory, but it's a victory one the less. You remember how hard it had been to do so much as get John out of his room when this all began. Getting him to eat was a battle and getting him to bathe had been a warn in and of itself. Using force to get your son out of his room hadn't been your proudest moment but it was all you hadn't bothered to try and with the days reaching four you were terrified to think that starvation in his own home was what would do your son in.

You pause then and the sick feeling in your gut makes you swallow down a sob.

Before all this you liked to believe John was invincible, that he could lift mountains, stop trains, and he would be the one to finally put you to rest. That seems like a foolish dream now though. It was foolish on it's own, laughable even, that you could put so much belief in a a boy so small. But now it's all you can do to hope that he will hold himself together.

Barely eating and throwing up what he does, barely sleeping and waking up screaming when he can manage, crying out more fluids than he takes in. John's face doesn't light up when he smiles anymore and he looks so frail, so brittle, like the smallest thing would take him from you.

You set the dish towel aside and head upstairs. Bypassing John's room without a thought, he's expressed how much he doesn't want you in there and your heart breaks to remember him screaming at you. Before you go to your room you leave a clean towel and a change of clothes outside the bathroom, something you'll hope he will change into but know that he won't. 

He won't touch you, will barely touch anything you might, for fear of infecting you. This is what you think, anyway, because the way he looks at you is like he's scared he's contagious.

You wish desperately to touch him, hold him, just once. Maybe then you both could start getting back on the right track.

Maybe...


End file.
